I opened an ebook store a few months back. To date I have lots of resell rights material in there but what I really want is quality fiction eBooks... but it's not easy to generate contacts with Authors in the hope of publishing their ebooks. In an effort to help achieve this, I have created an Authors area (www.theebooksale.com/authors) on my site that allows Authors to sign up and upload ebooks to my store for review. Of course, the fun will be getting Authors to visit my site... but do you think this is a good feature to have? I have not seen this type of 'direct upload' approach before... so does it exist (I'm sure it does) and is it a worthwhile endeavor?

By putting Charles Darwin "The Origin of Species" under "science fiction" I think you're really narrowing your target market - there are probably not many fundamentalist Christian ebook fans out there. It means I stopped browsing your site at that point.

Rather, if you build a comprehensive site that is easily navigated by consumers and you develop a meaningful, respectful relationship with content providers (i.e. Authors) who have the ability (read: no prior contracts) to upload their own material,

Then both consumers and providers will promote your site.
There are a number of independent authors here. My advice would be to court them and use this forum to generate a healthy word of mouth traffic.

May I suggest you don't set your royalty rate in stone? Negotiation with individual authors would be a better way to go. Your clients will probably fall into two main groups: (1) previously published writers with a backlist, and (2) unpublished writers.

Books from the first group will be out of print and all rights will have reverted. But such books already have a track-record, and will have been professionally edited. They will draw a lot of readers to your site and you might do well to accept a much smaller percentage.

The second group will have been frustrated by the process of trying to find an agent. Their books are, overall, much less likely to be of publishable quality. How are you going to address that? You will be overwhelmed.

Then there's a more difficult question. Authors go to publishers for two reasons, promotion and distribution. You cannot offer distribution as a USP, since anyone can upload a text to Feedbooks. That leaves promotion. You have to convince authors that you can earn your cut.

Finally, readers are rightly wary of buying an ebook sight-unseen. They need to be able to browse at least a fair sample beforehand.

Interesting that that "not many fundamentalist Christian ebook fans are out there." I love ebooks and even have two "Good Books" in ebook format on my Kindle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by moz

By putting Charles Darwin "The Origin of Species" under "science fiction" I think you're really narrowing your target market - there are probably not many fundamentalist Christian ebook fans out there. It means I stopped browsing your site at that point.

Interesting that that "not many fundamentalist Christian ebook fans are out there." I love ebooks and even have two "Good Books" in ebook format on my Kindle.

There are lots of Christian eBooks but they are mostly being published for dedicated Bible reading programs. Check my web site for details. I would like to see that expanded to eBooks of course but there are some that are PDA based.

By putting Charles Darwin "The Origin of Species" under "science fiction" I think you're really narrowing your target market - there are probably not many fundamentalist Christian ebook fans out there. It means I stopped browsing your site at that point.

I think you would be surprised at the fundamentalist Christian ebook fans that are out there. I'm also surprised that you would think that because of someone's beliefs that they would limit their reading range (other than pornography). Open minds come in all types of boxes.

Whatever one's religious beliefs may or may not be, to classify "Origin of Species" as "Science Fiction" is clearly wrong. It's one of the "definitive" scientific theories of the 19th century.

Certainly true. All fiction is a genre and by definition the author is writing something they know to be not true and for entertainment value. Whether you thing that any theory is right or wrong is certainly not a reason to claim that it was written as fiction.

Whatever one's religious beliefs may or may not be, to classify "Origin of Species" as "Science Fiction" is clearly wrong. It's one of the "definitive" scientific theories of the 19th century.

I think we have a "tempest in a teapot"! My comment was not about the classification of the book. It is obviously in the wrong classification. A further review of the website will show that it does not appear to be a "fundamentalist christian" website based upon other ebook offerings.

I was simply surprised at the assumptions made by the commenter regarding the reason for the classification error. My comment was not regarding any religious beliefs.

I would steer clear of any site that makes such a mistake. This is just not honest (intellectually). DDC should be the guide in such matters not somebody's personal paranoia. My university library classified Darwin under 'History of Science.' 'Fiction', it certainly ain't!

By putting Charles Darwin "The Origin of Species" under "science fiction" I think you're really narrowing your target market - there are probably not many fundamentalist Christian ebook fans out there. It means I stopped browsing your site at that point.

Fingers crossed he's misfiled it in there.

To explain to him though, it's widely accepted as fact, however extreme fundamentalist Christians believe that the theory of evolution is false.

No matter what your beliefs putting it in Science Fiction is going to be mistakenly seen as a rather cutting swipe at a whole lot of people.

Calling evolution a fiction is either a strong religious statement or a symptom of extreme carelessness. Given the popularity of actual science fiction in this site, advertising it here when the *only* example of the single most popular genre here is something that contentious... dumb.

Humour I can take, I regularly frequent a bookshop that puts their economics material in with astrology and other delusions, for instance. They at least have reasonable arguments for their filing decisions.

Ok… it was total ignorance on my part for filing “The origin of the Species” under Science Fiction… I must admit, I have not read the book yet. I have now correctly filed the book under ‘History of Science’.
Sincere apologies for any hurt caused. My website, is not a Christian Fundamentalist orientated one… it is intended to be a provider of general fiction and non-fiction ebooks. I pray people will not steer clear of my website due to this mistake… as my original post stated, I’m new to this market (and have learned a valuable lesson her).
Thank-you for pointing this out and also thanks to Cthulhu and Richard Harly for ye’re helpful comments.
Richie.